Chewing Pine

Alif Tree – French Cuisine (Compost Records, 2005)

I don’t know if I would have been able to identify this as a European outing judging the album by the art work on the front, but I could have made a good guess. Even with the solid colored squares and circles that are displayed for the listener to see, the music, at least the first half of the album is engorged with European style electronic hip hop. On the first few tracks, Nina Simone and Shirley Horn are sampled over top of minimal, lo-fi beats with jazz inclinations and strings. That in and of itself would have been enough for me to guess not only Europe, but France, specifically, as the birth place of this album.

Alif Tree has a studio in the suburbs of Paris where he finds the laid back atmosphere conducive to creating his albums and myriad production work. After the four tracks most related to hip hop on this disc, the sound veers drastically towards laid back piano lines and electronic production flourishes. Not to say that this is a dance album, but there is certainly a lot of behind the boards work by the producer to be appreciated here.

Ending an album can frequently be difficult, and Alif Tree attempts to draw this affair to a close with an homage to minimalist composer Steven Reich. It works out well, sending a message of appreciation to the composer while giving listeners a multi-layered finale to an interesting, if not somewhat schizophrenic album.